Thursday, December 22, 2011

SAP startup problem in Windows System

Troubleshooting SAP Startup Problems in Windows

There’s probably nothing worse than not being able to start your SAP system … Especially the production system! Aside from the operating system and the database server you must pay close attention to certain places in SAP to find out what caused the problem and how to solve it. Here are the two places you will definitely need to check: EventViewer (Application and System logs) and the SAP Management Console (MMC).

EventViewer can provide useful information and it may help you pinpoint where the problem resides. The SAP MMC gives you the ability to visually see the system status (green, yellow or red lights), view the work processes status and view the developer traces, which are stored in the “work” directory. Example: usrsapTSTDVEBMGS00work.

For a central SAP instance to start successfully, both the message server and the dispatcher need to start. If one of them or both fail to start, users cannot log in to the system. The following scenarios will illustrate possible causes of why an SAP instance might not start and the reason of the message:

A connection to the database could not be established because either the SQL login specified in parameter “dbs/mss/schema” is set incorrectly or the SQL login was deleted from the database server. This parameter needs to be set in the DEFAULT.pfl system profile (under usrsapsysprofile). In the messages above, we see that the SQL login ‘tst’ is expected but it does not exist at the database level.

Solution

Set the entry to the appropriate database owner. If the system is based on Basis <= 4.6 or if the system was upgraded from 4.x to 4.7 the database owner should be “dbo”. But, if the system was installed from scratch and it’s based on the Web AS 6.x the database owner should match the SID name in lower case. Example: if the SID is TST then the database owner should be “tst”. If the parameter is set correctly in the DEFAULT.pfl profile check at the database level if the SQL login exists. If it doesn’t, create it and give it database ownership to the .

Scenario 3: SAP does not start at all: no message server and no dispatcher

Symptoms

The message server and the dispatcher do not start at all in the SAP MMC.

The following error when trying to view the developer traces within the SAP MMC: The network path was not found.

No new developer traces written to disk (under the “work” directory.)

Problem Analysis

The network shares “saploc” and “sapmnt” do not exist. That explains the “network path not found” message when attempting to view the developer traces within the SAP MMC.

Solution

Re-create the “saploc” and “sapmnt” network shares. Both need to be created on the usrsap directory.

Scenario 4: Users get ‘No logon possible’ messages when they attempt to log in

Symptoms

Work processes start but no logins are possible.

Users get the login screen but the system does not log them in. Instead, they get this error: No logon possible (no hw ID received by mssg server).
In the SAP MMC, the message server (msg_server.exe) shows status “stopped”.

Most likely the “abap/buffersize” instance profile parameter is set to high.

Solution

Edit the instance system profile at the OS level under usrsapsysprofile and lower the value assigned to “abap/buffersize”. Then, restart the instance. Also, it’s important to find out if any other memory parameter were changed. If not, the system should start once the adequate memory allocation has been set to the the “abap/buffersize” parameter.